To be or not to be ensinante/aprendiz de inglês: (Im) possibilidades na sala de aula de adolescentes trabalhadores em vulnerabilidade social

Abstract

This dissertation presents the research on my educational practice as a teacher of the basic level of English language (LI) in a socially vulnerable group of adolescents and young workers aged from 16 to 20 years. The study design was motivated by the curiosity to understand the students movement in response to their LI learning and to verify the existenceof identity shifts resulting from this experience. The research, carried out in a 36-hour course during a semester, had as locus of enunciation a classroom of the institution where I have been working as an English volunteer teacher for the five past years. The study, of a qualitative nature, used the participatory observation of my teaching practice as a researchmethod. Proceeding to the observation of my own practice brought me closer to my subjectivity and to the subjectivity of the students more than initially planned. I also became subject of the research and this led the study to an autoethnographic format making me proceed to the observation of both participants and teachers move along the way, during the entire semester. Data were generated by questionnaires answered by the students at the beginning and at end of the term, in addition to individual interviews at the beginning of the course. Narratives were written in personal journals after the classes by all participants students and the teacher. The students productions were also considered part of the corpus. I also conducted individual interviews with four members of the Association that hosted my research, as supplementary information about the participants of study.The investigation considered the impacts of a teaching approach that aimed at fostering collaboration and responsibility among learners, as well as their possible subjective moves towards social inclusion and mobility. The classroom dynamics had the support of an extra pedagogicalmaterial especially shaped for the course in alignment with the objectives of the research. As a result, I understood that the act of teaching and learning occurs not in a linear but in a spiral way, and that the social space of the classroom can become a fruitful arena to the expression of multiple voices and exchanges among interlocutors. I also realized that the process of language acquisition can become more fruitful when it circulates among the subjects enabling movements of social inclusion and identity shifts in response to the new process of knowledge construction.